Available online at www.sciencedirect.com ScienceDirect Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 107 ( 2013 ) 145 – 152 Evaluation of Learning for Performance Improvement International Conference Malaysia, 25 – 26 February, 2013 Experiential Approach as a Design Innovation Solution to Prevent House Breaking Crime Linda Abd Hamida* and Wan Zaiyana Mohd Yusofb a,bIndustrial Design Department, Faculty of Art & Design, Universiti Teknologi MARA 40450 Shah Alam, Selangor, Malaysia Abstract The Malaysian Government Transformation Program (Roadmap 2.0) on “reducing crime initiatives,” has pointed-out that the house break-ins and vehicle theft appears to be a serious crime that needs to be addressed firmly. Leaded by the public negative perception, it has forced relevant authorities to look into these crimes. The initiatives however are found to be more practical for the urban areas, as compared to the rural areas which were populated by mostly the elderly residents. Hence, the elderly people less participating in such programmes. It was further found that the rural area crime's index will be on the rise if rural residents fail to implement and adopt appropriate precaution measures. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to describe the factors that lead to house break-ins in the rural areas using experiential approach and recommend an innovative design as a solution to prevent house breaking problem. ©© 2013 2013 The Published Authors. Publishedby Elsevier by Elsevier Ltd. Selection Ltd. and peer-review under responsibility of Universiti Malaysia SelectionKelantan, and Malaysia peer-review under responsibility of Universiti Malaysia Kelantan, Malaysia Keywords: Experiential design; design innovation; house breaking crime 1. Introduction The numbers of crime hotspots have increased from four to six states with Kedah and Perak joining Selangor, Kuala Lumpur, Johor and Penang as stated by the Royal Malaysia Police (PDRM). On the other hand, the initiatives plan to prevent house break-ins by the Governments have been set up, even though, the Malaysia crime index have decreased by 11.1% from 177,520 in 2010 to 157,891 cases last year but an average of 419 crime cases was reported each day as of May 2012. While the crime rate have seen a * Linda Abd. Hamid. Tel.: E-mail address: [email protected]. 1877-0428 © 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and peer-review under responsibility of Universiti Malaysia Kelantan, Malaysia doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.02.293 146 Linda Abd Hamid and Wan Zaiyana Mohd Yusof / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 107 ( 2013 ) 145 – 152 reduction, and yet the public negatives perception towards crime preventions by the police force was still high and intrusive. This issues have also been highlighted by Tan Sri Dr Koh Tsu Koon, who act as the Chief Executive Officer of Performance Management and Delivery Unit (Pemandu) recently. The GTP Roadmap 2.0 was formulated after Pemandu opened laboratories for six weeks in April and May 2012 to identify issues and new growth areas that can be implemented under NKRA. Therefore, this, calls for concerted efforts for the researcher to investigate the factors that lead to house breaking crime, thus providing a guideline as to establish preventive methods towards house break-ins and to improve public perception towards this issue designedly way of thinking, adapting experiential approach. Experiential design is the practice of designing products, processes, services, events, and environments based on the consideration of an individual or group’s needs, desires, beliefs, knowledge, skills, experiences, and perceptions. The problem in ED is more difficult to understand, and requires a great deal of research, more than any other design domain. Davenport and Prusak (1998) argued that experience refers to what we have done and what has happened to us in the past. Design experience refers to the cumulative experience of designers or design groups in mastering competence in developing products over a long period of time in many diverse circumstances. Teixeira (2007) defined that design knowledge is a fluid mix of designers’ experience, their values, contextual information about the production and use of products, and the combination of structured methods and designers’ intuition, that provides a framework for conceiving a product, fashioning the means to carry it out, and estimating its effects. The in-depth analysis of design knowledge characteristics is presented through four major categories: expert insights, design experience, design values, and contextual information (Teixeira, 2007). As Bunge (1996) suggested, knowledge arises through the interaction of many forms of learning, in which thinking, experience and action all play a role. Although the process of learning and the nature of knowledge are not completely understood, there is wide agreement that knowledge creation requires experience. Kolb’s definition of learning as “the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience” offers a useful perspective (Friedman, 2007). Any kind of experience may, in principle, be transformed into knowledge. Kolb emphasizes the relationship between experience and knowledge as a dynamic process of continuous reproduction and regeneration (Friedman, 2007). Knowledge and experience have a close relationship and dynamic interaction, and a holistic approach carries these convictions into design research and practice. 2. Statement of Problem The current crime situation is worrisome and it directly affects the public confidence in the police force and to gaining back the public confidence and trust, the PDRM have stated to combat crime through the crime prevention initiatives because it is cheaper to prevent than to detect and this were aligned with the GTP Roadmap 2.0 initiatives program, which is to combat crime seriously in Malaysia. As the member of the international police community, the ‘Index Crime’ uses as to quantify crime has been apply in Malaysia and in order to be an index crime, the crime must be reported, however, there is the existence of a sizeable proportion of crimes that goes unreported verified by the PDRM. These unreported crimes majorly contributed by the elderly victim that refuses to make a police report, even when reported, the elderly because of other problems associated with aging, may not be a credible witness. Elderly, in the house break-ins are more vulnerable to become the victim because of their nature characteristics which is more fearful of crime compared to other age groups, additional to that, they have fewer resources for coping with victimization and the consequences of crime. Previous literature study on the causes of the crimes have discussed that the migrant or foreign worker is one of the factors that contribute to the crime index in Malaysia. Therefore, the Government have implementing policies by instructing the employers to registered their foreign workers in the system or the unregistered and unrecorded foreign worker will be send home Linda Abd Hamid and Wan Zaiyana Mohd Yusof / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 107 ( 2013 ) 145 – 152 147 immediately otherwise more crime involving them will occur and rising. However, the proportion of crimes committed by foreigners merely hovers around 2% of the total index crimes in Malaysia and this goes to show that on a per 1000 basis, Malaysians commit more crime than foreigners. The data gained from the previous literatures are rather limited either to support or to reject the assumptions. Therefore, the migrant or foreign workers involvement with the crime in Malaysia will always influence as the factors of the house breaking crime but no statistical data as to neither prove nor support the assumptions. Despite that, the effectiveness of the existing home safety product in Malaysia have not been recorded and moreover the installations of the home safety device are costly and no report regarding it effectiveness to prevent house breaking crimes exist., The report by Sydney National Roads and Motorists' Association 2011, stated that 49% of cases where homes with alarms had also been burgled create panicking to the public that rely on their safety home device. However, the efforts from individuals, committee or from the PDRM can be described, that most of the Government Safety Program were meant for the high risk area which were also the urban area, when the people in the rural area are being left out by the medias that reported on selected crime based on high rated viewers in the crime news. The barrage news that involve rural people will then be reported if it is considered as the worst case scenarios which usually ended the elderly life after house break-ins, otherwise, the news will not be highlight fairly with the high rated viewers, public will unconsciously less attention to the elderly who majorly resided in the rural area as they were considered as the small population residents, however, crime did exists in the rural area and these phenomena should be taken seriously by the public, policy makers and the Government. 3. Research Methodology The result of GTP Roadmap 2.0 reported, Johor Bahru, Petaling Jaya, Alor Setar and Butterworth has been experiencing higher rate of break-ins and, the statistical data provided by the PDRM, May 2012 has counted that Johor is the highest house breaking crime in the rural area. A cluster random sampling was used and the district of Batu Pahat, Johor was chosen compared to other seven districts as it has the highest population of 382,175. Sungai Bagan Darat village in Sungai Kluang Mukim which located in Rengit, Batu Pahat Johor was chose as case study with Six (6) elderly residents that age 50 years old and above who has experienced the house breaking crime were included in the study, the exclusion criteria included elderly who were not permanently residing in these households (visitors residing elsewhere) and those with difficulty in communicating and who refused to participate in the research. All respondents are the elderly and lived in the Sungai Bagan Darat village, where majority of the households in this area planted oil palm tree either as their source of income or working for others.